This Smart Phone App Will Save Your Battery

We've all been there. You check your phone and you have 82% so you think you're totally safe to leave the house and you head out on your merry way. About an hour later you check again and "What the hell?!? 18%?? How did that happen??"

Well, there are probably a lot of reasons. There's an app running in the background you forgot about, or your phone has been searching for a signal, or any mix of mysterious circumstances. That set of circumstances, though, is about to be demystified thanks to an app from UC Berkely.

It's called Carat and it is a research project complete with an app. Once downloaded on your Android or iOS-based cell phone, tablet or music player, it will take measurements about your device and usage habits. The info heads off to UC Berkely servers where it is analyzed. Then information is sent back to your phone that will help you optimize how you use your phone so that heart-wrenching drop in battery power doesn't happen... or at least not as quickly.

So basically, Carat is an energy bug-detecting research project, and your use of the app will help a lot more people figure out how to make a little charge go a long way. Pretty cool, right?

And don't worry, there's a privacy policy, so you don't have to feel like you're being spied on. It collects the following info: what apps are running, the % battery remaining, memory and cpu utilization, the unique device ID, the battery state (e.g., plugged in), and the OS version and phone model. They DON'T collect names, email addresses, private data from other apps, or any of the stuff that would make them creepers. They're strictly about researching how to fix energy bugs.

Knowing that, are you likely to try this app out? I know I'm downloading it!